The myth of low salaries in southern Europe

One of the main political and economic issues evoked by the majority of left-wing people in Europe, specially in southern countries, is that some governmental, budgetary or political choices, due to capitalist and neoliberal approaches, tend to make salaries low. Undoubtedly that wages in southern Europe are low, when compared to those in northern Europe, that is indeed merely a simple fact to assess. But the main political-economical question that immediately arises is, what is the cause for such low wages in Portugal, Spain or Greece. And the collected data from Eurostat doesn't seem to confirm any of the left-wing theories for low wages, such as the high inequality amongst workers, the labour governmental policies nor the standard on the minimum wage. Indeed, the data seems to simply attest, that there is a very strong correlation between the GDP per capita and the gross wages, that is, those incomes before taxes. Therefore, if you'd like to have your country to have higher wages, then you have to press your government to introduce policies to promote economic growth. Nonetheless, in the country where I come from, Portugal, the political debate is surreal and everyone talks about low wages, as if they were a misconduct from destiny or the evil intents of the greedy capitalist and financial system. Indeed there is inequality in wages in Portugal, and there is low labour protection in many new jobs for the youth, nevertheless rationality says the cause for low wages comes directly from economic performance, and not from legal or political measures. Good salaries are paid by good economies. Europe is no exception!

Salary vs GDP per capita in Europe (2007)
Country	Annual Gross Income (EUR)	Real GDP per capita (EUR)
Bulgaria	2 699,7	4800
Denmark	50 578,1	46200
Germany	40 100,0	32100
Ireland	40 932,0	40800
Spain	22 176,5	24500
Cyprus	23 662,9	24300
Hungary	9 338,8	10400
Malta	16 027,0	15500
Austria	38 458,7	35900
Portugal	17 201,6	17200
Romania	5 044,2	6100
Slovakia	8 031,3	11900
Finland	34 738,0	37200
Sweden	35 534,0	40400
United Kingdom	43 675,4	31000
Source: Eurostat	Real GDP per capita: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-datasets/-/sdg_08_10
	Earnings: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/labour-market/earnings/database

Why pornography and violence on media are so harmful for one's mind?

I seek humanity in mysterious ways

One of the major problems of dealing with the harmful effects of pornography, for instance, is that the individuals that seek to debate about such subject, normally put into the reasoning theological or religious precepts contaminating therefore a pure scientific approach on the subject. I will not at all on this text evoke any religious or theological arguments. There are mainly, according to psychoanalysis, three levels of driven works and thoughts in one's mind, the consciousness, the preconsciousness and the unconsciousness. All the primary instincts come mainly from the so called limbic system, and they do operate not only on the pre- and conscious level, but they are much more powerful on the unconscious level. When one fells hungry, even if one tries to counterbalance such primary instinct with a rational and logical thought, one's mind will be absorbed unconsciously by that specific feeling of hungriness and his apparently rational choice will indeed be biased by a primary instinct. It's an illusion so that the individual, in his ego, may suppose he's making a free choice purely driven by freewill. It's not a question of destiny nor fate, it's simply a drive that works on the unconscious level and bias one's apparently rational choice. Two mathematicians from the same school and with the same methodology solving the same equation most likely would use different mathematical approaches if one is immensely hungry and the other is sexually aroused. Indeed that's what defines the true human nature, a mix between logical abstraction of thoughts and primary instincts evolved from natural selection.

As Freud clearly puts it, in his Civilisation and its Discontents, people seek happiness through satisfaction of sexual and other primary instincts. The remaining people are the source of unhappiness in the sense that other people block one's primary intentions and block one's drives to seek those primary instincts. Indeed when you, an heterossexual man for example, desire a woman, the main true feeling that prevents you from copulate with her is fear. Your fear the consequences even if you don't consciously realise it. You fear her husband, her father, you fear the lawful consequences, the authorities, you fear your family or the reprimand from society. That's fear the counter psychoanalytical drive that stops you from ravish and eventually raper her. That counter force is very powerful and efficient because it works on the same level of the sexual primary instincts. As sexual drive is very powerful, fear is efficient because it uses the same primary methodology and operation, since both drives come from the limbic system and both operate on the unconsciousness. One will never admit that is fear, what truly prevents him from ravish another human being into the most primary actions like forced intercourse or even murder. This balance between two primary opposite drives, brings humanity into the society. Plato, in his Phaedrus, presents us with the same paradigm in a more philosophic and literate presentation when Socrates tell us that, when the individual is strongly in love with someone, he's like a coach pulled by two horses, a white one and a black one. The black horse pulls the individual strongly and instinctively, without concern with the status quo or social rules, towards the loved one; whilst the white horse cools down these instincts and brings rationality into the drive. Religion, as Freud puts it and Freud was an atheist, is thus a very efficient means for harmony in the society since religion normally, with the notion of guilt and sin, indeed embeds fear in one's mind. Not fear from the society but fear from an imaginary almighty father. Another religious methodology is prohibition. By simply forbidding sexual intercourse or sexual pleasure like masturbation, on so many different circumstances, and stages of life, religion was efficient in bringing harmony into the society. If it is true for the majority, indeed religion brought as well tremendous attacks for the freedom of the individual, even if such freedom is only partially apparent. And one of the most iniquitous attacks performed by religion, is the freedom of thought.

If she, the hypothetical lusty lady, doesn't want you, and you, a heterossexual man as a mere example, do not fear her father, husband, family or law, because you are either brave or mad, you most likely will have then the consequences through another primary feeling: pain. Either the father or the husband will beat you, either you will be incarcerated or you'll be ostracised by your family, friends or society; in any case the consequences are the painful effects that such violence, lack of liberty or ostracisation implies. Obviously the majority of the people are civilised, and through the smoothly abolition of fear, respecting all the cultural and societal rules, the majority of the men engage therefore romantically and sexually with a partner through socially acceptable means. But that demands time and effort, whilst technology provides immediate sexual pleasure through pornography. Why losing time and effort for the same sexually intense pleasurable goal? If one can obtain the same intense sexual satisfaction, as a pure voyer of sexual intercourse, being completely sure that one disguises oneself as being a totally anonymous viewer, the fear fully disappears remaining only the guilty and the sinful thoughts brought by religion and education. If one has no religious beliefs or one doesn't have them as being that important or relevant, one most likely will let oneself be absorbed by those consequences-free and immediate sexual pleasures. Pornography pays then back, as it provides the viewer a powerful sexual satisfaction without fearful or painful consequences. Then, you know you may advance, since nothing stopped you from that specific primary satisfaction. Therefore you seek the next step of satisfaction, either by seeking more violent sexual intercourses or more humiliating scenes for the passive actor or actress. The common and exemplary sexual intercourse doesn't satisfy you anymore. Your wife or girlfriend doesn't satisfy you anymore which may also explain the enormous divorce rate in western societies. Then you seek younger or more sexually attractive actresses to see, even more beautiful or voluptuous than the previous ones, since the previous do not satisfy you anymore. What would stop you according to psychoanalysis? Fear or pain, and you have neither. The borderline to reach pathology, vice or unlawful media content might be easily reached, since nothing is able to stop those ravish instincts. Since sexuality and violence play on the some level on the primary instincts, because in the Paleolithic and a feature common to most mammals, sexual intercourse was made most likely through the use of violence against other males; you'll seek more violent movies, series or video games, since the previous ones become boring, i.e., without the violent content that truly satisfy you. You'll tend to go into extreme ideologies too, since fear from other individuals was also brought from this mix of instincts and all this media content has distorted your notion of the outer realm. Probably either you'll start to defend extreme left ideologies and you'll start to hate all the human beings that have more money or power than you, being those the potential male competitors in the Paleolithic which you have to kill to obtain power and females; or you'll tend to extreme right and you'll start to hate and despise immigrants and minorities, since violent instincts haven taken your thoughts.

Why trains are more expensive to use than airplanes or buses?

The true and crude answer to this question is politics. It's far from being technical. Airplanes and buses emit a lot of CO2 and pollutants through the burning of fossil fuel and these externalities are not totally paid by the passengers. Trains are by default electric, which in cases like Europe, that electricity may come from wind power or hydro energy sources. Furthermore in airplanes there's a lot of competition, the business is very active and the non-profitable routes are by default not made or shutdown. Of course, the means through which the vehicle travels in the airplane industry, in this case the "free air", also allow higher flexibility for changing routes and lowering costs. In trains nonetheless, the state imposes routes to small cities and places that provide huge deficits to the company, according to what the state considers the public interest. The means through which the train travels are either not free, and normally these rails are owned by a single company which may almost impose its prices. Regulators also oblige trains to have a lot of staff, which in many cases is superfluous due to technology, even the machinist is redundant nowadays, like it is clear in many new train systems. A third of the train ticket might just go to pay high salaries for the train staff, even if many collaborators are not that specialised, like by merely selling or checking tickets. We talk now and then about self-driving cars, when such technology would be technically much easier to operate in trains, due to the moving restriction imposed by the rails.

In a short, the socialist way of looking into the transportation sector made trains less competitive with the airplane and with the automobile, which is a technical paradox, considering the huge costs of operating an airline and the enormous costs of the road network and infrastructures. Though in the airlines industry the market is very active, companies come and go, competition is ferocious, which forces prices to go down, without losing on safety. Indeed travelling on the high competitive private airlines is safer per passenger-distance than travelling on the highly subsidised public trains. In Europe that is clear, as the big train companies are almost all public and the airplane companies are almost all private. Furthermore the car driver is far away from paying the true externalities of automobile usage. Contrary to what drivers often say, cars are highly subsidised with public funds for roads and highways, very expensive viaducts, tunnels, semaphorisation, police road patrols or paramedics, not excluding the high economic costs car users don't pay with the huge car fatalities on roads. And that economic distortion provokes a low cost for car usage which also contributes to the high price of trains, since trains also compete with cars. And if car usage were more expensive, train usage would be more intensive and the train price per passenger-distance would be lower. Trains also allow higher comfort as compared to airplanes since there's no need to check-in or go through security control and normally train station are in the city center, not in the suburbs.

Again the answer to the question is politics. Further, trains have a "politico-economical defect" as, contrary to cars or airplanes, the majority doesn't run on petrol. By being independent from fossil fuels and being extremely efficient on energy consumption per passenger-distance, the train system provoked a setback to the economic paradigm based on consumption, mainly fossil fuels. Trains may be thirty times more efficient than cars, when energy is compared per passenger-distance and for standard vehicle occupancy, the energy in trains being normally electricity, which means trains are also much less pollutant. Thus, a true environmentalist doesn't promote electric cars, promotes electric trains, as trains consume much less energy per passenger-distance. And if trains are not flexible for small routes, like cars are, they are very efficient for passenger transportation between cities, now more than ever, as cities become more compact, dense and with more population. I.e., trains make economic sense between urban areas with high density of population, and cities in the last centuries demonstrated a tendency to become more compact. Trains also occupy much less space for transporting people, as compared with cars or buses, theoretically lowering costs, since land is an expensive asset in urban areas. So why are trains so much expensive, when compared for example with buses or airplanes? As stated, whilst buses and airplanes companies are mainly private without impositions from the state to operate on routes which have financial deficit, trains are obliged to do so. Trains normally run without concurrency and thus the companies may apply any tariff. The staff in many cases has benefits comparable to public servants, which means there's less labour flexibility as compared with the other private sector transport companies. And buses run also on highly subsidised motor-ways, since bus users are also far way from paying the true costs of road construction and usage.

In a short whilst the technical grounds tell us trains should be much cheaper, politics made trains unreasonably expensive. By the promotion of fossil fuels and an economic paradigm based on consumerism as the key factor for economic growth, highly inefficient means of transport such as the automobile had to be promoted, and efficient means of transport such as the bicycle for urban transport or the train for inter-city transport had to be demoted or even socially ostracised. The ideological approach made by the states was the most efficient one, since sophistic and pseudo-humanitarian argumentations would be highly valuable by the public opinion, forcing then train companies, normally public owned or with a high amount of regulations and impositions by the state, to have a low margin for profit. Yield management for instance is a common practise in all airliners, but not in all train companies. The states, mainly in the western world, also made huge and enormous public investments on roadways, practically neglecting investment on new railway. By being extremely safe, efficient and environmentally friendly, the train is undoubtedly the transport of the future. Let the politicians provide the train the same economic means and economic players we see operating in the bus or airline companies, and the prices will go down sharply and quality of the service will rise up. If we force a system for the railway more based on political, romantic or ideological approaches, and not based on technical and pragmatical points of view, we'll always have a decaying means of transport, even if the technical evidences per se tell us that train is one of the best, when analysing energy efficiency, safety, confort and emissions, system of passenger transportation.

American Sniper - another lousy propaganda

The film American Sniper is nothing but another lousy and despicable american propaganda, as usual. Why do I still lose money and time with this? What do I seek, but violence and blood that satisfy my most primary instincts, such I seek pornography or sugar? Basically the script of this movie depicts the humanity that remains within a solider. A solider, before being a solider, trained to kill and destroy "targets", commanded by tyrants and politicians and driven by ideals of nationalism, is a man, it is a human being. But the main paradoxical question is this: wouldn't the Iraqis and the Muslim men in general fall in love, have wives, children, war comrades and a fatherland and family to protect? Are the americans the only human beings in these histories, with emotions and true human feelings? Why this dichotomy in the human race of having always the good guys and the bad guys, the bad guys being always the others, the reminders, the aliens or the outsiders? Indeed there is a true and relevant historical fact in the script of the movie, which the common viewer, drunk with human emotions and patriotic feelings, merely neglects: the americans were the invaders of a sovereign nation. And therefore all the movie script serves to legitimate such invasion, with human emotions, demonising the Muslims, as the Muslims demonise Americans. Exactly the same did the Nazis as they invaded the East, the Slavs then being no humans, merely cattle and red beasts to be shot down. The movies of the Nazis did exactly the same, demonising the enemy and humanising the solider: "we kill because we have to, to protect our fatherland and our family", even if the philanthropic argument was to search for weapons of mass destruction, which eventually never existed. I learned something very important with this movie: never trust on your human feelings because they mislead you, they are very easily conducted by what you see, and not by on what you must reflect and think.  Trust although on your Reason and just then seek for Justice, even if the main purpose that drives you, is Humanity. 

The Capital and the Fatherland – the Catalan case

GDP per capita in Iberian Peninsula.
Source: EUROSTAT

Undoubtedly I cannot take any other part in the present issue in Catalonia, as the part that defends the independence of the region. One cannot imagine a certain people, inserted within a democratic nation and culture, requesting formal and legal approval from the central powers, so that such powers can legitimate the independence of a certain democratic region. Either the powers within a very strong liberal and democratic culture, such as in the United Kingdom with Scotland, allow the sovereign people to democratically decide, or, normally the people that seek independence, use violence to obtain it, such as many African colonies did against European powers. Angola for example, according to the Portuguese constitution of the 1970s, was integrally part of the Portuguese nation. Any secession of the Portuguese empire was faced with discontent and force, and the authorities of the time legally reasoned with the Rule of Law of the Portuguese state. I remind that one may find nations where the Rule of Law does work independently of whether those nations are democratic or not. The African colonies went thus through a very violent and lengthly war for the independence, such independence movements being supported by the two big major powers of the time during the cold war. And today, notwithstanding the severe civilisation and democratic deficiencies of those African nations, they are, at least formally and officially, sovereign and independent nations.

Communists and socialists although have a very contradictory political approach to those issues regarding the autonomy of the people. If such people fight against American imperialism, those people seem to have a strong legitimacy for their sovereignty; nonetheless, if such people, like in Afghanistan, Ukraine, Poland or Hungary, fight against a communist main power, such as the Soviet Union, they suddenly lose the sacred right to protest and defend their autonomy. One cannot find therefore any political coherence when we hear for instance the members of the left-wing party Podemos defending the autonomy of Catalonia, when they defend tyrants in South America. One find coherence nonetheless in modern European liberals which never supported the imperial tyrants which sat in Washington, further not supporting either the invaders that came from the East “to freed” Europe from Nazism and Fascism. Liberty shall not depend on our political quadrant nor on the state where in live and are politically inserted. Liberty is a concept, which mankind shall defend independently of our personal and cultural beliefs. The USA, hence, is one of the biggest world hypocrites, since it always invaded countries providing liberty as the main philanthropic cause. Whilst the Soviets as they invaded sovereign nations were nominated as tyrants, the American invaders were the liberators. An invader is an invader independently of the ideology that it carries and spreads. Spain has always been an empire, and she did well spreading their values, if we think how many people in the world are culturally Catholics and if we consider that Spanish is the fourth most spoken language in the world, after Chinese, Hindi and English. She did well in the past, but time has changed, and Democracy demands that a nation is defined not only by constitutional law, but by people that share values, language, principles and most of all, people that want and desire to live together. And the remainders may not decide by themselves nor prohibit their freewill. The United Kingdom has therefore shown a great democratic contribution to the world when it allowed Scottish to freely decide their future. As did Canadians in Quebec some decades ago. But whilst the UK was already a major world empire that fought with violence and military power any imperial secession, Canada was never one.

But let us not be naïve. The emotions that drive people to nationwide freewill movements and to protect their fatherland, are not, fortunately, what they used to be. We live in capitalist societies, and money, now more than ever, plays a big role. Catalonia has the highest GDP in Spain, doubling Valencia and almost four times the GDP of Galicia. As per person, the Catalonia has twice the GDP per capita that for example Andalusia. Therefore supra-national entities, like federations for instance, have also a major economic and social role in the redistribution of economic and financial assets amongst the regions, diminishing poverty and inequality. The European Union is a very good example, if you consider the huge amount of financial assets that were already transferred from the north to the south, and not for wages nor social benefits, but mainly for infrastructures, such as roads, railway, schools, hospitals and water supply. In any case, the balance between equality and freedom might be hard to achieve within a group of people. Milton Friedman for instance, said once that a country which puts equality before freedom, normally obtains neither of the them. I partially disagree since I think there must be a balance between those two major concepts. Making compulsory contributions to the group, i.e., taxes, which are used to pay to other people poorer than us, does not mean directly that we lost our freedom, because freedom is not a binary concept. In that sense, Spain had an important centralized role, redistributing funds from Catalonia, into poor regions such as Galicia or Andalusia. And I'm perfectly aware that often by not giving financial autonomy and merely subsidizing, nations tend to not change their economic tissue and tend not to perform reforms that provide better economic performances. But if we think on the European economic dichotomy between north and south, we realize that at least since the Industrial Revolution, or even the Reform from Martin Luther, that the north has always been wealthier than the south. And there are always certain differences that, in my humble opinion, will make the south not so wealth as the north, and one of the such reasons in my opinion, is weather. As a conclusion, I strongly support the Catalan movement for independence, but I am perfectly aware that for many people in Catalonia the capital in their pockets is well before the fatherland.

Warning-free HTML Hello World

This code gives a simple HTML Hello World page that is parsed fully corrected through any HTML validator, namely the official one, the W3 validator, and without any errors nor warnings. It is the smallest piece of HTML code that runs without any warnings nor errors. It is good for pedagogical reasons, as one can see what are the HTML elements that are always mandatory, and it is also good for test purposes.

 <!DOCTYPE html>
 <html>
   <head>
     <title>This is title</title>
   </head>
   <body>
     Hello world
   </body>
 </html>

One fifth of net wage in the UK goes to automobile

One of the reasons to use the bicycle or the public transit in the daily life is cost, i.e., to save money. According to the OECD the median net income in the UK is around £18,700 a year and according to autocosts.info, which takes into account all the inputs from the users, disregarding statistical outliers, the average total costs for the British motorist is roughly £4,000 per year. Therefore the average British driver spends about 1/5 of their net income, only to own and operate their automobile. With the bicycle or the public transit when available, you can save really a lot of money, specially regarding those items related to running costs.

This data is taken from autocosts.info/UK.

Ivanka Trump and the English grammar

An interesting issue of the English grammar, mainly its vocabulary, is that it comprises several words for many combinatorial or daily-life situations which for example other Romance languages do not seem to have. Remember is different from remind, between is not the same as amongst, switch is slightly different from swap, and lend and borrow are the opposite things. Within the same logic grammatical reasoning any literate mind knows the the word latter is different from the word last. The Oxford Dictionary tells us that latter means "the second or second mentioned of two people or things" while last means "coming after all others in time or order". Therefore when the group comprises two elements or alternatives orderly presented latter shall be used for the last element, while when the group comprises more than two elements one shall refer last. An interesting parallel might be found with between and amongst. Nonetheless as Ivanka Trump was in Germany for a conference, when asked what was her official role as daughter of the president and presented with three different possibilities she replied "surely not the latter". Wanted to be grammatically snob, and made a grammatical mistake. As we say in my mother tongue "tal pai, tal filha"!

And as such, I quit from being Wikipedia contributor

After thousands of contributions to Wikipedia for several years in several languages, I quit of contributing to Wikipedia. Not because I think that some articles are not trustworthy, because they are in many fields, like maths and physics where passions and ideals do not play an important role, but I definitely do not want to lose my time contributing to a project, which in many fields, is nothing but a post-truth digital leaflet of american historical propaganda.

I refer particularly to the article for the "atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki", which is written strictly from the american side. Till here, no big issue, since Wikipedia works from contributions from donors, i.e., people like me that used to write for several articles enlarging them, so, it is not so uncommon that an article lacks a neutral point of view as the person who wrote it, might have had a biased approach. But as I tried to improve the article, providing reliable sources for the sentences I was adding, trying to confer more neutrality to such article, in a harsh debate (let's hope they will not delete it, as is is also typical sometimes), every step I made, in every sentence, was blocked by a bunch of "american patriotic" editors that seemed to think that dropping a weapon of mass destruction upon civilians does not raise an ethical issue. It's incredible ridiculous, but it is from this self-evident truism that the verbal tension arose. 

It was a tremendous huge and harsh debate, as I was simply trying to include this sentence, which was blocked:

The ethical justification for the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is still debated to this day, due to several reasons including the number of casualties provoked by the bombings or the alleged militarily unnecessary, though other bombings such as on Tokyo have killed more people; but also due to the usage of weapons of mass destruction upon civil population.

I cite my last and final sentence to that debate:

Do we really need the other article [about the ethical debate of the bombings] to include such evident truism, so that it can be included here? Do we need sources for a truism? Even if we needed, I gave you as a source, a book with 552 pages that respects WP:SOURCE whose title is "Ethics and Weapons of Mass Destruction", which mentions several times Hiroshima? What do you need more to accept such sentence? If you want to convert WP in the digital leaflet of US post-truth historical propaganda, feel free, I'm out of WP as contributor, I quit. And I definitely, as a reader will stick to physics and math, as we based ourselves there on ''facts'' and not on patriotic ideals, and above all we do not make cherry picking (this article is cherry picking based from start to end), and I will give zero credibility to any article referring to US History or anything connected to US. You're a bunch of History re-writers, not better than Stalin's scripters.

Veganism is like a Religion

I start my text with Logic using the what I call the vegan paradox:

If everyone in the world were to be vegetarian only drinking one drop of milk per year each, the world would be totally sustainable without harming any animal, and though there would not exist any vegan in the world.

Veganism in this sense uses the same methodology as any religion, it gives one plausible and truthful arguments so that one can act radically in their habits, hence simply and totally stopping eating and consuming any animal products, regardless of how they were collected. For the sake of understanding my point of view, we might give alcohol prohibition as an interesting comparison. It is known that alcohol provokes a series of social and health problems to several communities and individuals respectively and that's why there was a prohibition in United States, and several other Christian cultured countries, in some period of time of their histories, forbid the consumption of alcohol. While in western societies such problems regarding the consumption of alcohol were ruled by civil and criminal laws, in secular Arabic countries, such alcohol prohibitions were set by religious laws and inquisitional traditions, but the causes for such usage forbiddance is exactly the same, whether a religious or a civil law is applied. Forbidding anything for being evil is much easier for transmitting a rule to other individuals than explaining how to act and that the consequences of such action might be harmful to oneself and others. It is believed that it is due to the same scientific reasons, that Muslims and Jews don't eat pork, since pigs were animals that during several centuries, mainly in hot climates, were transmitters of several diseases, such diseases at the time more present in animal blood; explaining also why the religious practises demand that they pour the blood out from the slaughtered animal before the meat is prepared for eating. Sacralizing those habits, acts and prohibitions into the religious patterns, laws and rules, was the most effective method to transmit the public order and the healthy habits into the non scientifically cultured and illiterate population. Religion always played an important role in that sense, since it is very effective in transmitting good habits to the population without the usage of police enforcement units. One might call it mass behavioural control when television and mass media didn't even exist.

I abstain myself from eating meat for several years. I simply don't eat it because despite the environmental and health issues, I don't think there is a fair usage of meat, since it always demands in any case, animal killing. If I eat a portion of pork or beef, I immediately and directly contribute to the slaughter of an animal. Though if I drink a glass of milk per week, the direct link is much harder to logically sustain, as theoretically it is possible to have cows just for the unique purpose of milk production. In that sense the problem, as investigators sustain, is not milk per se, it is though the amount of milk and dairy products our society consume and how the livestock industries are organised. But a vegan simply and radically abstain himself of drinking any drop of milk, or eating any egg, facing such rules, as a Muslim religious believer faces the rule of not drinking alcohol, even if such alcohol is totally inoffensive, like the one it is used for cooking same dishes.

Nevertheless these critics, I partially understand those radical approaches. I, for example, smoked one pack of cigars per day for several years, and I'm perfectly aware of the harm that such consumption provoked on me, and I'm also aware that the tobacco consumption provokes a strong neurochemical addiction. In that sense, my own personal "religion" dictates me, that I shall never again smoke any cigar in my life, even a simple blow, because I'm already aware of such health damages and addiction. Having a binary or an on/off approach to habits, is much simpler and easier than rule oneself on the consumption, usage or acting on several different aspects of life. Take another example, for instance the sexual relations. According to several theological works written by Christian men in the past, mainly in the Middle Age, delivering oneself to lusty practises, was immoral since such actions would destroy the pillar of the family and would therefore rotten the society. Practically what those theological men wanted, in a time where mortality was very high, was population growth. And instead of proposing moderate sexual habits before marriage for example, the theological writers simply linked such deeds with sin and totally forbid them, creating the notion of the lusty sin of fornication, i.e., sexual intercourse before marriage and hence punished by God.

I truthfully respect vegans, because they are a powerful counter-force in a world dictated by profit where animals are nothing but transmissible money-measurable assets or commodities in a global economy. Sometimes we need extreme actions in a world dictated by extreme generalised habits. But the vegans chose the path that religious men have for many centuries chosen in the past, they abandoned reasonable and wise consumption habits and they adopted the radical approach, i.e., the total abstinence of animal products consumption even if such consumption, theoretically, is completely sustainable and it doesn't harm any animal. In that sense, they adopted the same behavioural technique the Muslims, Christians and Jews adopted in the several periods of their lives, because as said before, it is much easier to pass and carry on an habit with simple binary rules than learning how to have a moderate, frugal and sustainable life style.

Hiroshima

There is no debate,
what debate
what possible debate
may you undertake
for the fate
and sake
of your carbonized mate?
Will you do such mistake?

There is no debate
no possible debate
for the sake
of your vaporized
human mate.
It was done
by a bloody state!

Will you awake
there is no debate
as it is written the fate
of the Great Snake,
the united state,
for such massive
shake and quake;
and sooner or late
for the sake
of Humanity
the ones that kill and rape
will take
their fate.

Those that crossed the red-line
devastating the most fine
human nature
those that spread the terror
the chaos and the horror,
the death and the pain
with no human constraint.

Which debate
might be possible,
for the sake
of your human mate?
Are you really awake?

Can you undertake
such mistake?
To justify and debate
the Terror?
the Torture?
the massive destruction
and the massive
shake and quake?

There is no admissible debate
that any human may take
for the sake
of one’s mate

Have you seen the lake?
full of blood
from radiation
which debatable explanation
may you give?
Not even forgive
may I conceive.

No debate
may I undertake
for the sake
for the fate
of my human mate.

Hollywood as the Ministry of Propaganda

Yesterday I had the time and the opportunity to watch the famous Hollywood movie Fury, where Brad Pitt performs the character of a tank commander along the western side of the European war during second world war. The movie is clearly and undoubtedly nothing more that an american propaganda movie, completely unlinked with the reality. Despite the fact that the american tanks were technologically much inferior compared with their German counterparts, the personnel on the German side were, bravely and militarily speaking, much more well trained and more efficient on their tactics and ferocity on combat. During the last scene of this movie we can see Brad Pitt as tank commander shooting the very well prepared and well trained Waffen SS soldiers, where they are shot very easily and almost idiotically. According to to this movie, despite the low armour thickness of the american tanks, the heroes leading those tanks could make the difference.

History actually demonstrates that the opposite is true. The German defending forces were outnumbered by large ratios, but still they were able, due to technological superiority and better prepared and braver personnel cause severe casualties on the enemy forces. The Allies won the war through numbers, and today, that is perfectly clear. Michael Wittmann for instance, a German tank commander, was credited with the destruction of 138 enemy tanks during the second world war. Not only he had technological superiority with his Tiger, considered by many the best tank in warfare at the time due to its armour and fire power, but Wittmann was also a superb tactician and a ferocious attacker. These numbers have not at all comparisons on the Allies' side. All the history of the second world war by the German side, is actually made of heroism, greater bravery and technological superiority, having the third Reich being defeated by the huge sacrifice and greater number superiority of the Red Army.

Michael Wittmann is accounted to have destroyed 138 enemy tanks and also 132 anti-tank guns. In the air on the other side, the biggest ace of all times, Erich Hartmann, pilot of the German air-force, is accounted for having destroyed 352 enemy aircrafts. In a large list clearly dominated by Germans, the first american appears almost at its end having destroyed 38 enemy aircrafts, mainly in the Pacific war. We still have to take into account the great damage the German submarines provoked on enemy forces, considering the German naval task force were incredible inferior in numbers, being the camouflage of submarines the most optimal and efficient option. 

I'm not at all defender of Nazi Germany, nor as pacifist have I any kind of veneration towards the German army, though I must stress out that american movies regarding the second world war are not better than the Nazi or the Stalinist propagandist counterparts of the time, in the sense that they impose on the masses and on the public opinion a total distorted and untruthful notion of reality. I despised the movie Fury neither because it has violence or because it's a blockbuster, but simply because the message it broadcasts, as in the great majority of the american movies, is simply totally incorrect and false. But what Hollywood actually is but the Ministry of Propaganda of USA.

Economic growth and automobile in Europe

I research for the negative consequences of the automobile in societies for a certain time, and it may be evident to many individuals, that high motorisation rates - number of passengers cars per 1000 inhabitants - provoke inevitably more air pollution and noise, mainly in urban areas, more traffic injuries and fatalities, more sedentary life-style related deaths and less quality of urban space, with public space being allocated to parking spaces and roadway instead of leisure infrastructures such as gardens or open car-free squares.

Nevertheless the impact of the automobile in economy, mainly in Europe, has not been studied carefully. Many think, that high motorisation rates are good for Europe, because some European countries, such as Germany or France, produce automobiles. Nevertheless the recent European crises showed that actually, the high motorization rates are mainly positive for countries which have several car manufacturers, being thus able to export such cars to the other European countries. German or France are the biggest exporters of cars to several European countries. Countries such as Portugal, Spain or Greece, deprived from car industry, allocate several financial resources to car imports; for example in Portugal cars represent the second biggest import after fossil fuels, in-which the later serve mainly to run such cars.

In addition, Europe is 80% energy dependent, mainly on transports, which means that when an European buys a car, he or she, will spend huge amounts of financial effort in the future, to buy the fuel that runs such car, such fuel, being totally imported (there are very few exceptions in Europe, like Norway). It's not strange though that in Portugal one fifth of total imports are cars plus fuels.

I went then to Eurostat, the European statistics agency and I started to collect and relate some data.

It's not hard to understand the graphic above, as it comes with no big surprise, because as one on average tends to be richer, they tend more likely to acquire an automobile. Nevertheless I wondered if that applies also to economic growth, but the trend was interestingly the opposite.

If we consider Luxembourg (LU) as a statistic outlier due to its low population and surface, we have a clear trend on the graphic above over the almost one decade 2003-2012, concluding that high motorisation rates in the last years contributed to attenuate the economic growth. The explanation is not hard to understand, considering as said before the European continent has a very high dependency of fossil fuels. As more cars a certain country has, not having endogenous fossil fuels, all that energy which will serve to run the automobiles will be imported, affecting the country's commercial balance, prejudicing therefore the economic performance. In addition, the majority of European countries, like Portugal or Greece, do not have relevant car industries, importing not only the fuels but also the cars. Many of those countries also had enormous public expenditures in motorways, such road infrastructures serving basically the automobile, and many of those infrastructures in the last years were made either increasing taxes or with public debt, affecting therefore economic performance.

Edit: I remade the graphic considering only European countries whose population is greater than one million inhabitants, due to scale factors.

Wordy warfare

Ever touched my loved arm?
the one I shall never step away;
beloved army I won’t disarm
armful power I won’t dismay!

Never touch my sacred turret
It is armed for the sacred one
Every word might be a bullet
Every devil might be a nun!

Berlin, a city of inhumanity and inefficiency

The capital of Germany was through an odd historical process of wonder, terror and apparent freedom. In 1945 the city was mostly destroyed due to the Allies’ air-bombing and the Red Army invasion. Later on, the famous wall was erected splitting the city in two blocks, somehow representing the blocks that divided the world during Cold War. As Berlin was almost completely torn down by the end of the second world war, the city urban planners, from both sides of the future wall, had the perfect opportunity to design a city for the future generations. Instead of creating a city where its citizens, its people, its inhabitants and their needs were fulfilled, the new-Berlin urban planners just had in mind the satisfaction of automobile usage and economic dependency on fossil fuels, helping therefore the american economy and the petrol industry. The urban planners of the new-Berlin made exactly the same mistakes other cities did, making a jay copy of north-american urban areas, where urban sprawl and automobile dependency are omnipresent and all its adverse consequences for life quality and economy.

The Brandenburg Gate on the beginning of the 20th century

The Brandenburg Gate after the war

Three sonnets

Through ages I’ve seen the pure reason
the candle of wisdom, which thrills my heart
Thou art the core for the yearly midseason
the starry core I shall never put apart

Thou art the shapes of a kind highly treason
gluttony, lust, envy and sloth form my art
I carve the deadly sins with scholarly precision
Do not dare to evoke any bond nor depart

The moon has became the source of my power
She copulates my soul every four weeks
Never dare to patronize nor to cower

my savant inspirational blasty peaks
in every finger I find a temple’s tower
which stabs poems as sleepy tweaks

Why is USA theologically the great Satan?

First of all, I must refer I’m neither a Muslim nor an Arab. I do not at all support any kind of terrorist attack nor I tolerate any kind of aggression towards human lives. I’m a pacifist and I’m not the “religious” type, if we consider the meaning this term has for the common sense. I’m just a philosopher and my favourite authors are Plato and Voltaire.

Nevertheless I completely understand the term “Satan”, merely as a religious metaphor. Satan, per se, does not exist, science hasn’t found it nor there is any kind of theory that might support the lightest existence of Satan. Though, Man since the most ancient times interpreted many facts through His mind and spirit giving them metaphoric symbolism. One of these might be the sky-night constellations, merely combinations of light spots in the sky which were anthropomorphised. The planet Venus is another interesting example, due to its colour and pathway in the sky. Because it is red and its path has an approximately V-shape in the sky, having the V letter the shape of the female vulva (word which starts with V, having also two V), which our ancestors would see in their daily lives on normally naked women, as underwear is an evolutionary recent creation, Venus was then historically linked with femininity, and through psychological connection with love and lust. The Great Architect, the entity Masons throughout the world define as their God, is another metaphor, as the architect is the being which draws the plan masons shall follow. We can nowadays with science clearly state that almost everything which is in the Bible might have some connection with reality, but only through metaphors, Adam and Eve being a clear example. We know that Homo Sapiens (modern man) had a beginning around two hundred thousand years ago. Primates and Homo Sapiens seem to have an anthropological primary fear of serpents, because evolution taught us serpents are dangerous as they are poisonous.  Still, because there is a very strong Freudian psycho-sexual connection (due to shape) between serpents and penis, serpents were strongly associated with the animal of lust and sin. Sin, Serpent and She are words which start with the letter S, the lonely shape of the letter S appearing to be itself a serpent. The Genesis is nothing but a metaphor.

Man made metaphors due to anthropological reasons. Therefore, normally they are linked with animals, meteorological and astronomic factors or - since Man, like any mammal, is a collective being which by default interacts in communities and groups - social interactions which we define with values.  Good and Evil, God and Satan, Heaven and Hell are just some examples. Many saints in catholic countries for instance are “responsible” for weather and crops; animals are seen as the mascots and symbols for so many clubs and teams; and good and evil are concepts which Mankind found many millennia ago to be optimal to define behaviours which are dangerous to the community or the common wealth, and those which are desirable as they are linked with prosperity, harmony and order. That’s why in every theological culture or regime killing innocents is somehow linked with Evil, and charity is linked with God. The illuminist movement converted these metaphoric concepts in something much more rational, although with the same ethical approaches and having the same practical functions, as killing is sanctioned by law and solidarity (the modern state charity) is seen as something desirable.

Metaphors, strongly supported by religion, played then a key role in our culture, even the Western one, and they were slowly through ages unveiled, as science and intellectual movements were progressing. So, as Satan scientifically does not exist, what this metaphor really represents and why USA fits within it? USA has 5% of the world population but consumes 20% of the world resources, externalising environmental and social costs to other countries. USA was the only country, along with Australia, that didn’t sign in for the Kyoto agreement, the first compromising international agreement in-which so many nations worldwide decided to reduce greenhouse gases emissions. USA was the only country throughout Mankind History that used atomic power to kill civilians. Around eighty percent of the world pornography – and I suppose, disregarding at all religious factors, that anyone might find wide broadcasted pornography as something desirable for prosperity and order – is produced in USA. USA is the only country, like Vietnam if I’m not mistaken, which legally accepts abortion up to the day the baby is born. Killing legally a healthy infant minutes before he is born, does not seem to be, for every reasonable person, something liable to be “good”. Observe the interesting graphical similarity between the words good and god, and the fact the letter G, is the letter for the word Galaxy, as our ancestors thought the Milky Way, was the Universe, having a helicoidally shape which then applied to the shape of the letter G, the letter of the word God. In USA, having a fire-weapon for “self-defence” is a legal and alleged constitutional basic right, and we know, that the only purpose and end of a fire-weapon is to kill. The developers of fire-weapons are not thinking in self-defence when they design and build them, but merely how to provoke the highest damage in the opponent, an euphemism to describe normally a human being. USA is one of the countries with more automobiles per inhabitant and in absolute number; being also a great promoter of these metal machines; the automobile being responsible in the 20th century for the same fatalities as the second world war, just in road accidents. USA does it since the Ford age, because automobiles run on oil derivatives, and oil plays a key role in the economic external affairs of the empire, mainly nowadays due to the petrodollar system, causing enormous severities to the planet Earth, mainly pollution. USA has the military power (even in historical proportions), that no other nation had in History, and commences a major war on average on every 10 or 15 years against another sovereign nation. The goals which are normally given to these wars are described as humanitarian or democratic, but history seems to verify that they are simply economic. The “axis of evil”, as Bush defined, is just a set of oil producing countries which do not wish to comply with the petrodollar system. 

USA, like the Nazis did, put one of the most outstanding qualities of Mankind, its capacity for innovation and creativity, on the service of death and destruction. Satan does not scientifically exist, but as with its metaphoric representation is concerned, USA fits within-it very clearly!

On the discrimination and free speech Question

Today as I was speaking with some work colleagues here in the Netherlands where I am emigrant, during the coffee break, one of them got quite offended when I made a slight joke about Jews. We were discussing how the Dutch are quite rational, when the mobility issues are concerned, which I strongly agree, and they were disagreeing with me, saying the Dutch rationality always applies to money. They were referring the Dutch national healthcare system is just money oriented, and not that much concerned about taking care of people. I replied on a quite naive way "They were founded by Jews".

One of my colleagues was so upset with my cliché that I got really amazed how can such a naive joke, create such a harm. I replied that we cannot now, create another dictatorship in which some subjects are not allowed to mention. He replied that, I touched a very sensitive cliché, a forbidden subject. After strong reflexion and meditation I realized that his reaction can only has one explanation: trauma.

The country where I come from, Portugal, was never directly involved in the second world war, we didn't have holocaust, nor any kind of strong Nazi propaganda. We were not invaded by any panzer Blitzkrieg, our cities were not bombarded, and considering the fact that our dictator at the time made the country officially neutral, we were not that affected by WWII as other European countries were. So, after the war, the collective feeling was not traumatic regarding the war effects. We have also our collective traumas, for example in Portugal, it is almost forbidden to publicly say anything positive about our ruler and dictator Salazar, who governed the country for 40 years between 1928 and 1968. And without any type of doubt, he put the public finances in order at that time. That's the scientific definition of trauma: you loose your reason due to a painful experience and you're commanded by fear. This type of individual experience can be generalized to a collective experience if we speak about a group of people or a nation.

What is my philosophical approach to such issue?

We shall never, never, never discriminate anyone, due to its gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, age, religion, sexual orientation or any kind of distinguishing features. That is basically what is stated in every country's constitution in the western world. But a black man, will always be black, and a white man will always be white (I had a very good friend of mine that used to tell me "I'm not black, I'm brown"). The truth, which I will not abnegate as a Socratic and Platonic follower, tells me that I will never discriminate a black man for being black, and I will always fight anyone who tries to do it, but the colour of their skin will always be different from one white man. As the true precise pictorial colour of my skin it is at some point different from my brother's. In the nineties in Portugal we had an outstanding public campaign which describes my point: "All different, All equal".

During all my life I had black friends and black mates, my best friend when I was at high school was black. When I was still a child I had a black nurse, so I keep the most passionate and respectful feelings towards black people. We shall never discriminate anyone for being black, white, yellow, Jew, Christian or Asian, and the Netherlands has a very good positive example to give the world, but we cannot at all, mislead the Truth, based on such precepts. When I say for instance to someone, that statistically, black people are more successful in Olympics, when the sport demands athletic premises, I am accused of being racist. Shall the numbers be neglected? If I say that, statistically, the Portuguese are not that good at Chess in the international contests, am I making any kind of national discrimination? If I say that, statistically, Asians are very good on Olympic gymnastics, am I making an ethnical discrimination? If I say that Dutch are taller than the Portuguese, am I making a national discrimination?

And what about the jokes

A free person with no traumas accept any type of jokes. If there is a fat boy, that always has been fat, and feels psychologically depressed and pain due to its weight condition, if someone makes a joke about fat people, it will harm him. The same applies to gays in Europe, to black people in north america or to Jews in Germany. A trauma, caused by a painful experience, makes the jokes regarding those subjects, not a pleasurable, but a painful experience. I am a Christian and I realize that almost anyone nowadays can make jokes about the Pope, about Jesus, about Mohammed or to any kind of sacred symbol. It harms me a bit, but I simply don't care, because I try to have an open mind. When some time ago Danish and French newspapers made some cartoons about Muhammad; after strong protests, European leaders basically stated that, the european case law, having freedom as one of the its main pillars, would allow any type of critics and jokes. They forgot to mention, that any kind of similar jokes towards Jews or gays, are not at all socially accepted or tolerated in Europe. Recently, the Portuguese gay and lesbian organization was publicly chocked, even considering a criminal process, because a famous popular singer made a song joking with the gay marriage. And this singer, publicly said, that he agrees with this type of marriages.

Conclusions

I have many years ago established my boundaries on what I can say or do, and for me human life, is and always will be, sacred and inviolable. It seems it is not like that in every culture. For instance in USA it is more socially open to criticism a public joke about gays, than the bombarding of Bagdad. Obviously that we don't want, as good humans we are, to harm other people's feelings, so we shall be sensitive to issues that can cause psychological harm or discomfort. But human life is much more important than psychological discomfort, and despite the fact you may say that one thing is not connected the other one, we shall always prioritize what is more socially allowable. And the pathway to the Truth demands pain (read the Allegory of the Cave, from Plato), and we, as freeman and freewoman, want to be able to address any type of subjects without fear or constraints, always with the maximum respect to human life and any type of race or creed. My conclusion is that orality is much more powerful when the feelings are concerned, so, these subjects preferably shall not be talked, but simply written, as reading a subject obliges the reader to have a more analytical and reasonable approach to hot issues.

Through my elongated lusty pen...

Through my elongated lusty pen
I strike my inner fleshy force
thou art this ink luscious course.
Hold thee tightly, one just can?

I envy all those virile men
whose forefingers thrust thee through
"May I call you my Loulou"?
Thy sins are not seven, they are ten!

How do thou strengthen my desire?
Why my pen gets so long?
whose length depends on thy fire

and on that lusty vigorous song?
Thou art the queen of my empire
Thou art the words, within my tongue


---


Can a Poet, be contracted by his pen?
For this tool, please provide me other words.
Women: have you thought on those swords
which belong to the brawny men?

Possesses thee, one just can?
Permission from the king and your lords
shall I get, to tight thee with my cords
cause my sins have already got to ten!

In each finger, I offer thee a sin
In each sonnet, I strike my propeller
Thou art so pure, I'd be so keen

to become thy favourite story teller
woman, thou art the reason why I'm mean
thou art my best Poetry bookseller!

The link between money and faeces, according to Freud

This is science: according to Freudian psicanalitic and psicossexual theory of human psychological evolution there was a strong relation between faeces and money. Individuals who, while being children had more pleasure retaining their faeces using their anal sphincter, are more probable to be a miser adult, while children who had more pleasure expelling their faecal excrements, would more probably be waster adults. This happens mainly in the so called anal phase, the second stage of Freudian psicossexual development, between around 2 and 4 years old.

"Rabo" in Portuguese means literally "ass"